Training in therapeutic skills for staff in residential and day care facilities

THERAPEUTIC CRISIS INTERVENTION teaches a therapeutic approach to helping children and to preventing and managing challenging behaviour. It provides staff with a range of techniques and strategies but is characterised by a strong emphasis on developing relationships and active listening.

​TCI is not just a training course but a system to help children and prevent and manage their challenging behaviour. We work closely with agencies to implement the five parts of the system:1. Management training and the development of policies and procedures.2. Clinical participation. The functional analysis of the child’s behaviour and the development of clear and regularly reviewed individual crisis management plans3. Supervision. Support for staff and a framework for learning from incidents 4. Training. A structure for core and refresher training involving learning from incidents and the further development of skills.5. Documentation and critical incident monitoring. Objective oversight and feedback.

The effect of implementing the TCI system is to significantly reduce the number of times restraint has to be used. But the programme also teaches restraint methods for use when this is the only way to make a situation safe. TCI originates from the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University, New York. This is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to promote the welfare of children in out of home care. It is trained and developed by a group of consultants in America, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Canada.

The TCI programme includes: - Understanding the effects of trauma on a child · - Assessing the situation before responding. - Understanding the meaning of the behaviour for the child and responding to feelings and needs, and not just the behaviour · - Keeping calm when faced with challenging behaviour · - Preventing challenging behaviour –addressing setting conditions · - Active listening · - Behaviour support techniques for agitated behaviour · - Emotional first aid for emotional outbursts · - Crisis co-regulation skills for aggressive and violent behaviour · - The Life Space Interview – a therapeutic debriefing technique to help children learn from incidents and control their own behaviour - Optional physical intervention skills